Once I put a dollar bill in my mouth for a minute because my hands were
full, and someone said to me, “Did you know that dollar bills are the most
germy things on the entire planet?”

I dropped my bags and removed the dollar bill from my mouth. But really, I
didn’t care about the germs.

Once I heard about a medical study that would pay you a lot of money to
stay in the hospital for thirty-two days straight. I had heard that this
medical study was looking for, in particular, people who exercised a lot,
so I told them on my screening forms that I exercised every day. “What kind
of exercise?”, they asked. “Oh,” I said, “yoga, Pilates, I run, I’m an avid
swimmer, I lift weights, I’m really into Crossfit right now, and oh,
totally Zumba on the weekends, I mean it’s just so fun!”

Poor thing, I could hear them thinking, that metabolism must just be really
slow. No muscle tone at all!

“Just one more thing,” they said. I had to pass a drug test on the first
day of the study. But they’re just so fun! I said, this time to
myself.

You have to wait thirty days between the last time you smoke weed and when
you take your drug test. What I did not know was that if you smoke a lot of
weed — hypothetically, let’s just say one eighth a week, every day and
every night for five years — and then you stop smoking weed entirely, your
mouth is so used to being dry, so used to having cotton-mouth, that when
you stop smoking, you’ll drool. A lot. Spontaneously. So, I would be
reading a book and all of a sudden a puddle of drool would slide out of my
mouth and splash onto the page in front of me, viscous as an egg white. Or
I’d be talking to the guy at the cornerstore, and all of a sudden my words
would start to slur. My mouth would fill up with water and trickle down my
chin along with my words. I couldn’t keep my spit in my mouth. I was
leaking all over the place.

“Did I pass my drug test?” I asked the nurse, swiping at my mouth with the
back of my hand. He looked at me oddly. “If you have to ask…” then he
smiled and said “You are good to go, my friend.”

I got into the study. Thirty-two days in the research hospital, and a check
on my way out

Here’s what I’m gonna spend the money on:
rent

gas bill

water/electric/trash bill

a plane ticket

a bunch of books from my “books I want to own” list

MDMA

nice underwear/new underwear

plant-based sponges

sweet consumer electronics

valerian

a new computer

a small donation to planned parenthood

paying my brother back

getting the crown on my tooth fixed

teeth cleaned? maybe

eye exam for glasses

ticket to see Maria Bamford at Flappers in Burbank

It turned out to be a study about sleep. On my first day there, they told
me I would only be allowed to sleep five hours a night. I would have a set
bedtime, they said, and would be woken up precisely five hours after that.
Napping was strictly prohibited. This was why there was a surveillance
camera in the room, they explained, feeding video to the nurse’s station on
the other side of the wall twenty-four hours a day, to prevent napping. “No
naps!” they said, sternly but gently. “No problem!” I said, matching their
tone.

I was given my own room, with a window that didn’t open. There was a double
bed with sheets the texture of fine-grade sandpaper and one of those
industrially fuzzy blankets with a texture somewhere between packing foam
and teddy-bear fur. Next to the bed was a nightstand on the left side, and
an EKG machine on the right side, easily accessible so that they could
attach electrodes to my scalp as I slept each night.

“Wanna see what your brain waves look like?” my assigned nurse said, after
the first night. It turns out that my brain looks like a sweater.

By day three, I was already exhausted and panicked. I just knew I would
never feel rested again. By day four, my eyeballs had gone dry, my pelvis
felt like a cracked egg, and my brain drooped from its stem and was withering fast. There was nothing to distract me from
my tiredness. By day seven, I had escape on the brain and by day fourteen —
murder.

This was very strange to me. I never picture other people’s deaths, but
there is a constant movie playing in my brain showing me my own death that
I’m helplessly compelled to watch. Even when I’m not watching it, it’s
still playing.

Falling off the lip of a stage so that my nose splinters and the bone
pierces my brain deep. Getting a motorcycle and then getting into a
motorcycle accident where the road-rash shears off my nipples and in the
emergency room the doctors are so focused on re-attaching my nipples that
they do not realize that I am hemorrhaging internally. Falling off my bike
onto some dead branches in the road, which impale me from my asshole up and
through my liver, beginning the slow poisoning of my system but what
actually kills me is the stick’s jab to my lung, filleting it like a gill,
more and more oxygen leaking out until I die. Trying to open a jammed door
with a rope and a screwdriver which suddenly flies open, causing me to stab
myself in the heart. Tripping on a roof and skidding all the way to the
edge of the building where my own momentum flips me over to smash on the
concrete sidewalk below. Being the passenger in a car changing lanes while
another car is simultaneously moving into that same lane the cars crushing
against each other until I am pulverized like meat. Et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera.

The person I was most interested in murdering was an extremely smiley nurse
named Kevin, who was given the task of waking me up every morning after my
five hours. He was so nice. I grew to hate him intensely. His interests, he
told me, were hiking, hanging out with his nieces and nephews, and gaming.
My interests were killing, killing, and sleeping.

Every morning, even from the depths of my deep sleep, I could feel him
extruding his kindness into the room like a neon sun. “Good morning!” he
would sing out, “I know you must be so tired,” and his sincere sympathy
grated the very surface of my skin, bloodied me up like knuckles. “But
let’s have you sitting up before I get out of your way!” he said cheerily.
Through a series of internal yanks, I pulled myself upright, my head
lolling on my neck like a drunk newborn. It was the lightest part of my
heavy body, but I could not level my gaze. I could not look him in the eye.

I was so angry with him. Look, I wanted to say, I lied to get in here! I
don’t exercise every day! I don’t exercise at all, ever! So please, just
shut the fuck up and let me sleep!

But I wanted the money. Money in a fan, money in a crumple, money in a wad,
money stashed in books, money folded into a ring, money left on a table,
money gone through the washing machine, money torn in half and taped back
together. I was so close to having the money.

So instead I imagined myself as a ghost in a horror movie. I let my hair
fall over my face, my eyes roll back in my head, and I spoke in a scratchy
whisper that did not bare my clenched teeth. “Thank you so much, Kevin!
You’re always such a ray of sunshine in my day!”

I often say the exact opposite of what I am thinking. Even when I have the
choice of saying nothing at all, I do not take that choice. Instead, I say
the exact opposite of what I’m thinking. From what I can tell, people
consistently believe me. I even have a reputation for sincerity.

I do not know why I do this, say the exact opposite of what I am thinking.
I often feel like I should not do this. And yet I have done this so
consistently over the course of my life that I figure there must be a very
important reason for doing this.

Here’s what I spent the money on:
rent

sweet consumer electronics

hair products

a plane ticket

clothes from the thrift store

chewy vitamins for adults

weed

a fancy bottle of gin

beer

doritos

egg and cheese sandwiches

I LOVE EGG AND CHEESE SANDWICHES.

I got four thousand dollars for doing that study. I got four thousand
dollars for doing that study. I got four thousand dollars for doing that
study. I got four thousand dollars for doing that study. I got four
thousand dollars for doing that. I got four thousand dollars for doing. I
got four thousand dollars for. I got four thousand dollars. I got four
thousand. I got four. I got —

The bag always drains so fast, like there’s holes ripped into it. The
plastic becomes dusty and smeared and oily. It begins to stink of char,
resin, half-smoked joints slowly unrolling, unravelling their burnt smell
into the air. And then, all of a sudden, in the contracted core of that
expanding smell, all that’s left is this tiny shriveled pit. No one would
see it as anything but trash, something that you’d sweep up off the floor
without looking at it too closely, like a crushed insect or a picked-off
label, sticky with grit. God, what a disgusting thing. I need to go get
this other thing, this shining soft bundle, this entirely different thing.
How did t​his g​et here?

You might think you know what it’s like to have no money, but you don’t. I
might think I know what it’s like to have no money but I don’t. In fact, I
can’t get around it. I can’t get away from it. I’m repelling it just by
speaking its name. I don’t know what it’s like to have no money, but I do
know what it feels like. It suffocates. It distracts. It makes
monosyllabic.

And it makes blooms. This petal says Fuck You! This petal says Fuck This!
This petal says Fuck Me! Fuck Y​ou!​ Fuck T​his!​ Fuck M​e!​ F​uck Y​ou! F​uck T​his! F​uck M​e! And you go
around and around and around again until there are no petals left.

I heard about some fashion designer who got his servants to iron his money
for him every day.

I heard about some woman who would dig up her relative’s bones every year
and then boil them clean.

I heard that a penny will disintegrate in a bottle of coke if you leave it
there long enough.

I heard that you’re never supposed to put tomatoes in the ‘frigerator.

I heard that they don’t make lipstick in that shade of red anymore because
they found out it was poisonous.

I heard that money isn’t even paper any more, it’s plastic fibers and
electronic chips.

I heard that your debts disappear after 20 years.

I heard that a body will decompose to bone after 12 years.

I heard that you’ve been looking for me.

I heard that you’ve been asking about me.

I heard that you’ve been waiting for me.

Can I hold your money for a minute?

Illustration by Carolyn Tripp